Example: in Sierra Leone, 100% of districts have access to lab services within 24hours and have key religious and community leaders who promote safe burials; 1150 ebola treatment center beds available (that’s 8.7 beds per reported case currently); 96% of registered contacts to be traced are reached daily; 102 trained burial teams are available. 117 new cases were confirmed in the week of Jan 18th, but that was down from 184 in the week before.

3-day research symposium begins Nov 18 on ebola and other infectious diseases at York University in Toronto, will focus on drug development, treatment approaches, and socially and culturally conscious responses to disease (Medical News)

Questionable ethics of US encouraging cuban doctors to defect while on overseas tour, like in ebola-affected countries, for example (New York Times Editorial)

1. BBC: Ebola cases slowing in Liberia, according to the WHO but it’s hard to be heartened by the WHO’s statements when
2. according to the NYT, responders on the ground in West Africa do not feel like the epidemic has turned the corner
3. Africanews24: Nurses talk about patients getting better
4. NYT: Responders face daily excruciating dilemmas about how best to provide care with limited resources — “[King] Solomon would be on his knees after a week here”
5. The Guardian: Mali’s first ebola casualty was a 2-yr old girl; all potential contacts have been identified, 112 people are in isolation and under observation

Response efforts

6. The Guardian, “Third possible Ebola vaccine to be sped through human safety trials” with donation from Canadian govt & Wellcome Trust
7. forbes.com, Patrice Motsepe, “Africa’s first billionaire,” donates $1million to Ebola fight
8. The Independent: UK Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) launches appeal campaign in UK, saying West Africa is 60 days from a humanitarian catastrophe [not crazy about the article’s title “60 days to save West Africa”…] and
9. allafrica.com: UK Aid will match first 5million pounds in donations to DEC, pound for pound

A couple of pieces for thinking critically about the reaction to Ebola cases in the US:

11. jezebel.com — depictions of Ebola in Africa in the US press can be seen as a contemporary episode of longstanding discourse about the moral and physical dangers of dirty, black/brown, uncivilized bodies
12. salon.com — “History repeating itself” — AIDS activists lament parallels between response to ebola today and HIV/AIDS in the 1980s